till break of day
by a solitary summer
Summary: Dylan sleeps. Tyr thinks. Slash


**Title:** till break of day

**Author:** solitary summer

**Rating:** PG-13, to be on the safe side, for vague mentions of sex and violence.

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Obviously. Title snagged from a poem by W.H.Auden (_Lay your sleeping head…_)

**Notes:** Set after _Deep Midnight's Voice_. Unbeta'd. English isn't my native language. First fic(let). There really is no excuse for this, but somehow it wanted to be written. Criticism _et al_ very welcome.

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Curious (he thinks) how the steady artificial glow of the light belies the passage of time.

If he raises his head and shifts a little he can see his boots, halfway across the room among the disarray of clothes. He doesn't need to see the knife in its hidden sheath, nor the throwing stars; as always, he'd made sure his weapons were in place and working order before he left his quarters. He hadn't needed them today. 

His muscles protest the unnecessary motion, and giving in to a languid weariness he allows his body to relax again, his eyes settling on the synthetic ceiling. No matter. Nothing has changed; his body has always been weapon enough for him. Especially with an unsuspecting victim. 

Death is an unvarying presence, as his people have always known: This, at least, was something he and the Magog could agree upon. Life and death only obtain meaning through the other.

Briefly closing his eyes, in the imperfect darkness he becomes aware of the ship's faint noises surrounding him, a steady, almost imperceptible hum he rarely notices anymore unless he focuses on it. 

Closer, the sound of breathing already settled into the rhythm of sleep. 

Death is no mystery to him; a fact, a straightforward solution to most problems; but even so it has always helped him to see things more clearly. Time and space compressed in a single moment of pure, perfect instinct, this body, its strength, its faculties; annihilation or survival, no middle ground; the doubts that so often complicated his life recently, momentarily erased. There are deaths he regrets (Geiton, dreamer of romantic dreams, too weak and too mad to be allowed to live), but each life taken is a decision, the most fundamental of choices, and he's always exhilarated in the power and clean simplicity of it. Those he mourned, watching them die or killing them, through their deaths always taught him something about himself. 

Life's lessons are infinitely more complicated. 

Four dead human soldiers on an obscure planet he's already forgotten the name of – not that it matters, though the woman will have told Dylan - reminded him of who he is; a reminder that should never have been necessary, slicing with brutal clarity through the paralysing purposelessness that, ignored for too long, had begun to seep into his life.

No blood, not without the bone blades, but his hands remember the feel of sinews and bone giving, breaking, tearing; and clutching this other body, running his hands over it in equal lust and anger, his mind effortlessly and naturally slipping back into the adrenalin rush of the kill, his hands remembered, and why not? Why not, for so long, for too long. 

The rhythm of breathing has become familiar, too.

This, like everything else, has always been a challenge between them: offered, taken up and tossed back. Sometimes in deadly earnestness, lately more often in a lighter spirit of companionable, silent understanding, but the core of tension, of danger still remains, as it should. They both need it. He takes pleasure in the fact that Andromeda, despite her recent pretences of trusting him, is still uneasy about engaging privacy mode, though she hides her disapproval better and has stopped asking for confirmation twice after Dylan had snapped at her if she'd rather watch. 

Stretching his body, as always relishing in the feel of power and luxurious relaxation; but quietly, not to wake the sleeper beside him. He values these solitary moments to consider his choices. 

Enemies rarely managed to take him by surprise, but companionship he'd grown unaccustomed to during the long years on his own, and perhaps for this reason had failed to take precautions against this… encroaching easiness, this dangerously stifling comfort, that even an increasingly impatient dissatisfaction can't altogether dispel.

He has a child; there should be no doubts in his mind about his course of action.

And yet.

For a little time almost against this will he'd felt himself at the heart of something, a change, a birth, a great dream on the verge of becoming reality, a grand, mad vision, of which the moment of understanding shared with an enthusiastic fool over a couple of dead bodies had been but a pale reflection.

But those moments had grown more and more rare, and instead he finds his life a succession of oppressively futile days, ripe with the staleness of chances passed by. Sometimes he thinks if he breathes deeply he can taste the festering stench of stagnation and decay. 

Now and then he catches a glimpse of the same revulsion in Dylan, feels it, the impatience, the pent-up frustration every time he'd felt forced to compromise his dream and ideals, following the worthless orders of a pathetic bunch of bureaucrats.

The reluctant acquiescence, that is submission nonetheless, saddens him every time. Shame, on behalf of this man, who shouldn't have lived a day in this universe, whom he himself had intended to kill more than once. Who survived, again and again, forcing dreams into realities of power, weighing his nascent desire to shape the universe according to his will against the persisting fear of consequences and change; whom he watched battle the ghosts of the past and loose too often. An unworthy weakness, but perhaps none that couldn't be overcome with a little persuasion, a little pressure… Unlikely, after all, that a man who had rebuilt his life from three hundred year old ruins would remain content for long and not strive for more. He'd seen changes, the shedding of skins and fetters. Taken pride in them. 

If he turned his head, he'd see a face from which even sleep can't completely erase anymore the lines of tension and fatigue. A haunted restless look rarely leaves those grey eyes, even as the mind yields to the sensations of the body covered in sweat, straining, demanding; breath coming in harsh pants.

He doesn't know what his own sleeping face gives away, but he suspects their expressions might mirror each other at those moments. 

It isn't in his nature to be forgiving of weakness like this, letting slip opportunity after opportunity. Sometimes every instinct within him screams to kill this man, before he becomes even more of an obstacle. But friendship is hard to come by; as is a bed-partner he can trust enough not to kill him in his sleep. And maybe that, too, is a weakness he ought to despise, but he can't but admire the arrogance of the man so carelessly asleep beside him. 

The need runs deep within him, too, and he's unwilling to discover what this death would teach him unless necessity requires it. 

The events he set in motion already have begun to unfold: Time has been stretched almost to its breaking point, and there won't be many more of those insubstantial days, conversations full of questions carefully unasked, lies barely concealed and wordlessly acknowledged, but he thinks they may be close to reaching an understanding.

His mind and body, drained from the over-long period of irresolution rather than the day's events, welcome the prospect of action. 

Feeling himself move closer towards the edge of sleep, he reflexively suppresses the acute awareness of his defencelessness.

Maybe, when he'll be ready to make his move, he won't stand alone. 


End file.
